Rupert Thomson - The Insult

‘Well, well. This is a coincidence.’

I wasn’t sure what the policeman meant by that. His voice did sound familiar, though. It was a soft voice. A softness that was comfortable, almost soporific.

‘It’s Detective Munck. I came to see you at the clinic.’

‘Of course,’ I said, turning round. ‘The pears.’ I shook hands with him and we exchanged a smile.

‘You remember my partner, Slatnick?’

‘Yes, I do.’

This was the first time I’d set eyes on Slatnick. He was chewing gum again (he had knots of muscle in his cheeks, he’d chewed so much of it). His forehead sloped backwards, the same angle as a snow plough. He seemed older than Munck, and less intelligent.

He stepped forwards. ‘You were going the wrong way.’ His nostrils were unusually wide and round, and they were aimed at me, like a shot-gun. ‘The wrong way,’ he said, ‘for the lift.’

‘Was I?’

‘You were heading for the fire exit.’

‘I’m always getting lost in here,’ I said. ‘It’s a big hotel. Confusing.’

‘What’s in the bag?’

‘The bag? Nothing. Laundry.’

‘You weren’t trying to make a run for it, then?’

‘A blind man? Making a run for it?’

Munck seemed to enjoy my last remark, though he faced away from Slatnick, sending his smile back down the corridor.

‘And anyway,’ I went on, ‘what would I be running from?’

Munck took me gently by the upper arm. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

I suggested the cocktail bar on the first floor.

As we descended in the lift Munck asked after my health. My responses were polite, but distracted. I still didn’t know what they wanted. And Slatnick was standing right behind me; I could feel the air being fired from the twin barrels of his nose into the back of my neck, into my hair.

The bar was empty, as usual. A dark, cramped room with mustard-yellow curtains, it smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the liquid soap they use for washing glasses. Munck showed the bartender his police ID and asked him not to disturb us. We sat in a corner booth. Munck put a folder on the table, opened it and leaned forwards, one hand placed on top of the other.

‘You know, I’ve got this theory,’ he said.

I waited.

‘It’s to do with free-floating anxiety,’ he said. ‘Nervous breakdowns, too. Paranoia. It’s why they happen.’

‘Not the aliens again,’ Slatnick grumbled.

Munck silenced his colleague with a look. ‘It’s my belief,’ he said, ‘that there are intelligent life-forms living on the moon.’

I stared at him.

‘Do you think I’m mad?’ he said.

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Slatnick thinks I’m mad.’

‘Life-forms,’ I said. ‘On the moon.’

‘They’re very advanced,’ he said. ‘They’re beyond anything we can imagine. And they’re watching us right now, the same way we watch ants —’

‘How come the astronauts didn’t notice them?’

‘What? A couple of bouncing men in big white suits?’

Slatnick sniggered.

‘All they did was pick up stones,’ Munck said, ‘like children. And that’s what we are, by comparison. Children.’

‘I see what you mean,’ I said.

‘They’re sophisticated. They’re where we’ll be in a millennium — if we last that long.’

‘So they’re watching us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which explains why we feel paranoid sometimes?’

‘Exactly.’ Munck paused. ‘You, though. You’ve got a reason of your own.’

There was a long silence, which I didn’t understand.

‘You mean, because I was shot?’ I said eventually.

The two policemen stared at me.

‘Is that what this is about?’ I said.

‘No.’ Slatnick popped his chewing-gum. ‘It’s nothing to do with that.’

‘It’s just a routine enquiry.’ Munck consulted one of his sheets of paper. ‘It concerns a Miss Salenko. Miss Nina Salenko.’

‘What about her?’ My heart had lurched at the mention of her name. Or was it simply that I’d been expecting something else?

‘She’s disappeared,’ Slatnick said.

I almost laughed. ‘What? Again?’

Another silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ Munck said. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Now that it seemed I wasn’t the subject of the investigation, I became quite talkative. I told the two policemen that she was always disappearing. I mentioned the evening that she was supposed to meet me downstairs in the lobby. How she never arrived. And how she didn’t call either, not for five days.

‘Were you a friend of hers?’ Munck asked.

‘Yes, I suppose I was.’

‘A close friend, would you say?’

‘It depends what you mean by close.’

‘Did you know her,’ and he cleared his throat, ‘intimately?’

Slatnick stopped chewing for a moment and looked at me sideways, across his right shoulder.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We slept together a few times. I wouldn’t say I knew her very well. We only met two months ago.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘It was a Tuesday night. About ten days before Christmas.’

‘Did she seem upset?’

‘No, not especially.’ I wanted to tell him that I was the one who was upset, but I checked myself. Now was not the time — as Munck himself might have said.

‘She didn’t say she was going anywhere?’

I shook my head.

‘And you can’t think of a reason why she might have wanted to leave the city?’

‘No.’

I remembered standing at the bottom of the hotel steps and hunting through my pockets for an imaginary key. Her calling out. Martin? The sudden shriek of tyres as she pulled away. That was the last time. I’d tried to phone her since New Year, but she was never there.

‘What about her car?’ I said.

‘She had a car?’

I nodded.

‘I don’t think we knew that.’ Munck glanced through the papers in his folder. ‘No, there’s no mention of a car.’

I described the car for him as best I could: the make, the colour — the naked woman dangling from the rear-view mirror.

‘A naked woman?’ Slatnick’s mouth had fallen open.

‘A doll. One of those little plastic ones.’ I smiled. ‘She called it Doris.’

Munck took up the questioning again. ‘Did she like driving?’

I remembered that Munck was fond of habits, but I didn’t want to mention the motels so I generalised. I told him that she loved driving. She was always driving places, often in the middle of the night. She was impulsive, some might say reckless.

‘In which case,’ Munck said cautiously, as if he was trying the flavour of a new idea on his tongue, ‘this might all be a fuss about nothing.’ He paused. He didn’t seem to like the way the idea tasted. ‘It was her mother who reported her missing. Do you know Mrs Salenko?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve never met her?’

I shook my head. ‘Never.’

‘Attractive woman,’ Munck said. ‘Still young. She’s a croupier.’ He paused again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think that’ll be all. For the time being, at least.’ He straightened the papers in his folder. ‘Oh, one last thing. You registered under a false name …’

I had to admire his technique. That quizzical smile of his told me the positioning of the question was deliberate, thought-out: he’d waited until the interview was over and I was off my guard.

I returned his smile. I tried to explain how the shooting had affected me. I told him that the life I used to live was dead. I was living a new life now, as a blind person. I’d adopted the false name because I thought it might help me to adjust. If I had a different name, I’d feel different. That was the logic. It was a symbol of my determination to leave the past behind, to begin again.